I just keep on dieing

[Zigster]

Gday, so I got starwolves 3 on steam recently. Seems like a game I should enjoy, but it's just frustrating the crap out of me. It seems to be: try and find the path that doesn't get you instantly killed, rather than about making actual choices. But I don't know, maybe I'm just playing it wrong or something.

I'm at the stage where I've got Greyhair, so I'm up to three pilots (Two 2nd gen fighters, 1 first gen). I'm still stuck on the mission to get the third mothership from the pirates, I can't fight them because I just die every single time no matter what I do, so I can pay them 300g (all my money) and get the ship without dieing. OK. Then I delay the main quest line to do another job for Alex to earn some cash to improve my ships so I don't just get owned by anything more than 3 novice pirates. Yet this mission causes me to die every single time from pirate attacks trying to get to the objective to meet Alex.

So now I'm back trying to get the mothership without paying 300g, so I can upgrade it and the fighters and hopefully not just get owned by absolutely everything. But it seems basically impossible. Can't fast travel because the stupid thing won't let me repair my ships before it asks me, having just spent hours figuring out how to escape from a quest where I have all these people chasing me (Greyhair needed to dock -inside the mothership- to change the ID, the mothership didn't need to dock at a station to change the ID like it did JUST before in another mission, oh-my-god).

So by process of elimination, I guess I need to buy the mothership for 300g, then choose one of the two options to continue the main quest. Instead of foolishly following my characters advice to delay the main quest to earn some money to upgrade my ships so I hopefully wouldn't get owned during the main quest. Hopefully one of these two options will not result in instant death, and I can progress. But really, if this is what I'm going to have to do for the whole story line... I'm not sure I can be bothered.

There really doesn't seem to be any tactics, choice, or... strategy. It's just like a maze, with dead ends. You just have to turn around and find the "right path", ie, the one where you don't instantly die.

So, what the hell am I doing wrong? Or am I really expected to get the "game over" screen over and over and over again until I find the right quest path?

And for my mothership, there is a type of weapon that I can't find anywhere to buy, "major calibre gun". Haven't seen one in any trade station yet. Is this the reason I'm dieing so much? Is there an actual practical solution to stop dieing so much or is that just part of the game?

My setup atm is: Two 2nd gen fighters with 4 light guns each. One 1st gen Fighter with heavy guns and missiles. All of them have shield boosters and personal missile defence systems. My Mothership has 2 scorcher turrets and a bardiche turret, and buffalo and hawk systems. I know I need a repair system for my mothership, but can't afford it yet.

I want to keep going, but there's a limit to how many times I'm going to "repeat" missions and such, and I'm getting pretty close to it now. So any help would be appreciated.

Cheers.